This project partners a consortium of eight Cooperative Educational Service Agencies with the History Department at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire (UW-EC), the UW-EC Center for History Teaching and Learning, and the Chippewa Valley Museum. The program aims to help teachers in Grades 4 to 12 increase student achievement levels in traditional American history by focusing on the history of Wisconsin's original inhabitants and immigrant groups, and linking them to the constitutional history of the nation. The use of state and national primary documents will help illustrate these parallels. During the three-year grant period, 70 mentor teachers will earn graduate credits through completion of annual two-week summer institutes and receive training in interpreting primary materials. They will also organize mentoring and networking activities for their peers, including training on learning strategies and delivery of graduate-level workshops for an additional 400 teachers each year. Content covers 18th to 20th Century history, with topics including the Immigrant Frontier: Settlement, Statehood and Community Building, and Encounter in the Great Lakes: Politics and Sovereignty in Native/White Relations from the Fur Trade to the Present. "European Immigration into Wisconsin, 1820-1925" is followed by "20th Century Arrivals."

A K-16 consortium led by the LEA will provide an intensive, content-rich professional development program in history education for 60 fourth through twelfth grade teachers in primarily rural districts in western and central Wisconsin. Partners include the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, regional historians, the Organization of American Historians, and National History Day in a program offering a U.S. history survey course, colloquia, retreats, a website, and a history teaching fellow mentoring program. Participants will examine American history from the colonial era to the present focusing on the development and reform of U.S. politics, the evolution of American society and culture, and the place of the U.S. in the world. Summer colloquia address the Colonial and Early Past: Relevant National Legacies, the Expanding American Democracy, and America in the 20th Century.